Mar­sha Pearce

The Art So­ci­ety's re­cent ex­hi­bi­tion of works by Sybil At­teck–one of the so­ci­ety's founders, its first sec­re­tary and a for­mer pres­i­dent–put a spot­light on the ques­tion of great­ness in art.

In 1971, four years be­fore the pass­ing of At­teck, art his­to­ri­an Lin­da Nochlin wrote the es­say Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Ac­cord­ing to Nochlin, the ti­tle of the piece orig­i­nat­ed from her en­counter with an art deal­er who posed the ques­tion while shar­ing that he want­ed to show women artists but could not find good ones.

Nochlin ar­gues that the ques­tion is found­ed on as­sump­tions about what it takes to make art. It pre­sumes a kind of think­ing that fo­cus­es less on so­cial shap­ing forces and in­stead pro­motes the idea that great art is cre­at­ed by some­one (more of­ten a white male) who car­ries a "mys­te­ri­ous pow­er" or "ge­nius."

She lists such artists as Michelan­ge­lo, Van Gogh and Jack­son Pol­lock as those who would fall un­der the la­bel of Great Artists–as those who would be re­gard­ed as pos­sess­ing that "mag­i­cal au­ra." She adds that the ques­tion of great women artists should point to the so­cial cir­cum­stances and in­sti­tu­tions which af­fect art-mak­ing prac­tice by women.

Cou­pled with Nochlin's ar­gu­ment is her sug­ges­tion of what mak­ing great art en­tails. She writes: "The mak­ing of art in­volves a self-con­sis­tent lan­guage of form, more or less de­pen­dent up­on, or free from, giv­en tem­po­ral­ly-de­fined con­ven­tions, schema­ta or sys­tems of no­ta­tion, which have to be learned or worked out, ei­ther through teach­ing, ap­pren­tice­ship or a long pe­ri­od of in­di­vid­ual ex­per­i­men­ta­tion."

At­teck's place with­in T&T's art his­to­ry is char­ac­terised by great­ness, not be­cause there was a ge­nius em­bed­ded with­in her, but rather be­cause of her sur­mount­ing of cer­tain so­cial con­di­tions, her ap­pro­pri­a­tion of a vi­su­al lan­guage that bold­ly de­fied im­age-mak­ing con­ven­tions of the day and her at­ten­tion to growth through her com­mit­ment to teach­ing, learn­ing from oth­ers and test­ing var­i­ous art me­dia.

In the 1940s, At­teck's bach­e­lor's de­gree ed­u­ca­tion in fine art at the Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, Mis­souri, ex­posed her to ab­stract forms and ex­pres­sion­ist ap­proach­es that in­flu­enced her work. She faced crit­i­cism with­in the lo­cal space, with her art be­ing de­scribed as not hav­ing the aes­thet­ic of T&T.

What should lo­cal art look like? Which styles are ac­cept­able in the lo­cal art mar­ket? At­teck pushed against the sta­tus quo, stir­ring de­bate about iden­ti­ty in pre-in­de­pen­dence T&T, con­ver­sa­tions that con­tin­ue to­day.

Lat­er in the 60s, she was asked to pro­duce mu­rals for the Hilton ho­tel. In a bi­og­ra­phy of At­teck, her sis­ter-in-law He­len ex­plains that in or­der to ful­fil the job of cre­at­ing the work for the ho­tel, Sybil At­teck asked for sab­bat­i­cal from teach­ing at a girls' high school but "her re­quest was de­nied."

He­len At­teck notes: "Sybil had the courage to re­sign her po­si­tion in or­der to take on this chal­lenge. It was a mon­u­men­tal task. She hired a car­pen­ter to build a cov­ered shed in her back­yard with a long tray of the di­men­sions she reck­oned she would need for one mur­al."

At­teck not on­ly saw to the build­ing of a place for her own work, she was al­so in­stru­men­tal in carv­ing out a space for art in T&T as a found­ing mem­ber of the Trinidad Art So­ci­ety. His­to­ri­an Ge­of­frey MacLean doc­u­ments that the group met in At­teck's liv­ing room. She gave art class­es, fa­cil­i­tat­ed ex­hi­bi­tions and is said to have in­flu­enced the work of Carlisle Chang, Willie Chen, Leo Glas­gow and Ni­na Squires, among oth­ers.

The show at the Art So­ci­ety, which closed on Jan­u­ary 20, gave au­di­ences a chance to see At­teck's art, on loan from pri­vate and cor­po­rate col­lec­tors. Pieces on dis­play showed a span of rough­ly four decades of art mak­ing. What was ev­i­dent was her at­ten­tion to ex­per­i­ment­ing with var­i­ous tech­niques, from the frot­tage which de­fines the piece Ca­roni Swamp to the scum­bling seen in The Rub­ber Tree. The work demon­strat­ed her play with both two and three-di­men­sion­al form, in­deed her ca­pac­i­ty to work in wa­ter­colours, oil, clay and more.

At­teck's art al­so il­lus­trat­ed her sen­si­tiv­i­ty to how a mark on can­vas in­ter­acts with a view­er. Her bold lines and shapes in such works as The Fish­er­men and Kings Wharf di­rect­ly con­front an au­di­ence, in con­trast to her sug­ges­tion of form as in the piece The Bal­loon Sell­er, where the hint of a gate de­scribed with the whis­per of brush­strokes lures the view­er in.

The ex­hi­bi­tion gave in­sight to an artist coura­geous­ly work­ing out a lan­guage over time, show­ing a hon­ing of skill. At­teck's pow­er is no mys­tery. Her great­ness lies in her pi­o­neer­ing spir­it and stead­fast­ness.

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The Sybil At­teck: Icon­ic Artist, Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­hi­bi­tion ran from Jan­u­ary 11�20, 2016. It is the first in a se­ries of events planned for the Art So­ci­ety's Lega­cy Project.

Vis­it: bit.ly/1QG­MoVX/